


A Garden

by ReaderRose



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Undertale Neutral Route - Exiled Queen Ending, Pre-Relationship, Soriel, The Ruins (Undertale)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 16:00:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12915291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaderRose/pseuds/ReaderRose
Summary: Sans finds a side project while living in the Ruins





	A Garden

**Author's Note:**

> Had this in my WIP pile for forever! I posted most of this an an incomplete ficlet on Tumblr months ago but I realized I didn't NEED a big arc and fancy conclusion. Or at least, I didn't think it did. So I can post this alone instead of the Dump!
> 
> This isn't very romantic and could probably read as platonic. I dunno, I'm not much of a romance person and I see this pairing as being very low key about the romance elements, so I don't know if it really crosses the threshold.

The hardest part was realizing it wasn't a choice, no matter how much it felt like one. Even if he knew a reset was possible, and the things it could restore, he didn’t have that power. It wasn’t his, it never would be.

He just had to live with what he had.

What he had, was a city. Far more than he’d expected, but far less than he’d lost.

At least he wasn’t alone in that.

Sans sat on the balcony, looking out over the ruins of Home. It was darker and more cavernous than most areas of the underground, but damn if it wasn't impressive.

Toriel stood behind, close and cautious. He'd demonstrated a few times how unlikely it was he would fall and actually get hurt. The demonstrations had made her vigilance all the stronger, but Sans couldn't complain. It was his fault for showing off, and Papyrus watched him like a hawk at times, too, so that wasn't anything new. It was kinda nice, actually. Familiar.

“how many monsters could this city hold in its heyday, anyway?”

“Far more than it ever did.” The twice-former queen sighed as that old wistfulness crept into her voice. “Unlike the new city, this one was never very crowded. For hundreds of years, our population was rather stable.” Sans leaned back into her instinctively, never outright nuzzling, but enjoying the contact. He loved hearing her talk about the olden days. Didn't matter if it was usually sad. So was he. “If anything, there were fears of crisis… More monsters were falling than being born. It was… not always pleasant. Then, my son was born, and things started to improve.”

“hope's one hell of a thing.”

She smiled. He couldn't see it, but he could hear it, feel it in the air with her breath.  “Indeed.” She pointed ahead, to an area devoid of much in the distance. “Do you see that? That was a park where I used to take Asriel. He loved the swings. When they arrived,” (she spoke fondly but never said their name. Never. Sans never asked for it, either.), “they and Asgore planted beautiful flowers there. The flowers needed no sunlight, just water and love.”

“you ever go there?”

He didn’t see her shake her head, but he felt movement behind him, and heard the answer in a sigh. “I would hate to see it in the state it's in, now. When we left for New Home, there was no one left to care for the flowers. I haven't had the heart to see them gone.”

Sans swing his feet back and forth a bit, unsure of what to say. He got the sentiments more than she realized. Still, the thought of a garden no one was tending to, that no one would ever go back to… it hit him harder than he'd ever like to admit, because hell, he should have been fresh out of pity for flowers when he could have been (should have been) mourning children and coworkers and brothers. Out of all the things that weren't around anymore, that garden seemed like the least concern.

Still… probably easier to bring some old flowers back than humans and children and monsters.

Easy fixes appealed to him.

 

* * *

 

For the next few weeks, Sans studied up whenever he could. He wasn't usually much of a reader, at least not in recent years. There was a reason all the books had been in Papyrus's room. Nightly bedtime stories had been it for Sans, and that was strictly tradition neither brother had had the heart to break. But Sans didn't know the first thing about gardens or landscaping, and Toriel didn't have a TV (not that anything good was on anymore), so he hit the books.

Toriel hadn't connected the dots when she saw him diving into the habit, even though she commented from time to time about his newfound love for reading. It had been a one-off conversation about the park. He hadn't pushed his luck in prying. Usually he could dismiss a bunch of specific questions as a joke or curiosity or casual conversation, but Toriel didn't have much going on that didn't involve him.

Their lives here were mostly focused on each other.

 

Sans worked when she was busy, or sometimes when she was sleeping. He wasn't used to all the work. It's one thing to do a dozen desk jobs, it's another to do all that manual labor. The good thing was Toriel never went to the park, so there was nothing there to have to hide. It wasn't hard to hide his exhaustion behind his known laziness, though sometimes she would notice his sore bones or dirt on his slippers, and it got harder and harder to hide.

Sans normally didn't do hard, but it was worth it.

 

When the first sapling showed itself, Sans knew it was time. He could have taken a shortcut back, as he always did, but he forgot that fact to the moment, and instead he  ** _ran_  **back home, back to her.

 

He couldn't bring her children back. She couldn't bring his brother back. But maybe they could bring  _something_  back to life. He just needed to show her it was possible. He just needed to start it, and then they could grow the gardens together.

And maybe he'd be able to see her smile the way she did in those old pictures of hers. Even just for a moment. 

 

Yeah, that would be worth it.

 

 


End file.
